An Irishman’s Diary about Countess Markievicz, her dog and a famous flag

The statue of Countess Markievicz on Dublin's Townsend Street divides opinion. One well-known aesthete and former Irish Times writer couldn't stand it, dismissing it as "crudely executed" and "a gift shop item enlarged".

On the other hand, it does have popular appeal, due in part to a feature unusual among political sculptures – the inclusion of the subject’s dog.

The dog was a cocker spaniel in Madame Markievicz’s case, by the name of Poppet. And he divided opinion too. The countess, from whom he was inseparable, indulged him endlessly.

But some of her fellow revolutionaries were less admiring of the ever-present mutt, and it’s said he was given the occasional kick when she wasn’t looking.

Browsing this paper’s archive recently, I chanced on an example of the sort of thing that might have annoyed the dog’s critics. It was a story from 1916, but it was being recalled in 1968, the Markievicz centenary year, by Maire Mackey (formerly O’Neill), a veteran of the Rising.

According to her, she was one of two Cumann na mBan members present on the occasion when the countess made a famous flag – the green one with the words “Irish Republic” painted on it – that, along with a tricolour, was to fly from the roof of the GPO during the fighting.

It was Easter Thursday night, in the Markievicz home on Leinster Road – an open house for poets, playwrights, republicans, suffragettes, and various other subversives. Among the lodgers, recalled Mackey, was the nationalist MP Laurence Ginnell. And realising the shops would be closed next day, the countess had to improvise the flag out of Ginnell’s bedspread, which happened to be green.

The material was stretched out, first on the drawing room floor, then on the grand piano. While the Cumann na mBan women held it tight, Markievicz cut the shape needed. After that, she and another guest, a man named Wolfe Tone Fitzgerald, painted the letters. But at some stage of this delicate operation, the flag was attacked by a four-legged saboteur.

This is how Mackey recalled the incident in 1968: “Madame’s dog, Poppet, always had to play his part in whatever she was doing, and kept jumping up and down pulling at the material until eventually he tore a piece out of the side. This piece is still missing, as I pointed out in the Kildare Street museum when the flag was placed on view during the Golden Jubilee commemoration”.

There is indeed a piece, or maybe two, missing from the flag. But there may also be a piece missing from Mackey’s story, because when visiting Collins Barracks (where the exhibit is now) during the week, I noticed that the museum credits its creator as one “Mary Shannon, a shirtmaker in the nationalist cooperative at Liberty Hall”.

Since then, elsewhere in the archive, I’ve found a reference to another of the famed flags of 1916 – the so-called “James Connolly” one, which was also green, but with an “uncrowned harp”. Recalling this in 1956, a Citizen Army veteran commented that “it, with many others, including that flown over the GPO on Easter Monday, was made by Mrs Mary Shannon, one of our machinists”.

If that’s true, it would make Maire Mackey’s very vivid recollection of the flag-making a fiction, unless it conflated two separate events – the making and the painting. The object itself is inconclusive. It has two machined seams across the middle, as if sewn together from narrow strips. And at least two of its sides have hems. But the hems would fit with it having been part of a larger article, while the frayed right-hand edge is entirely consistent with a scissors-cut.

As for the missing bits, half the “c” in “Republic” is gone, as is a smaller but adjoining chunk of the top right-hand corner. Whether these came off separately, and when, is not clear. The only known picture of the flag on the GPO – a grainy, long-distance shot – is no help. Nor is one of British troops posing with it after the Rising, because the flag’s right-hand side is obscured.

In any case, there’s an even edge to the missing parts, as if someone straightened the damage – whether caused by bullets or a cocker spaniel – with a scissors. So for various reasons, Poppet’s guilt may be considered unproven. Had he faced a republican court martial for treason, there would probably have been enough doubt to excuse him the firing squad. But all things considered, it sounds like he was lucky to get off with the odd kick.

@FrankmcnallyIT